


Car ils hériteront la terre

by musamihi



Category: Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Conspiracy, Gothic, Hero Worship, M/M, Oral Sex, gothic romance AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-05 22:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15873159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: Lamarque - a war hero turned winemaker, and the preeminent landowner in the Valley - is dead.  When a young lawyer rides off to settle the General’s estate, he encounters an imposter, a conspiracy, a sinister drunk, and a funeral no one will soon forget.





	Car ils hériteront la terre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/gifts).



I. 

The house jutted up, a black hulking thing in the long late-afternoon shadows pouring off the hills. Really, Marius reflected, it was less a house than a palace. It sat on a riser of unlikely looking crag, a sharp bare rocky anomaly amongst the green-and-gold of the vineyards sloping away in every direction. The clouds towered in the distance, tall and white like spires. It made a pretty tableau – and a welcome one, too, after the hours he'd ridden from his offices in the town. He was tired and hungry and sore. Resting himself in a palace, of all places, struck him as an extremely appealing prospect.

Although, Marius reflected, as he was called to a halt before a very high and very heavy gate by a couple of hard-looking men holding shovels over their arms like pikes, perhaps it was less of a palace than a fortress. 

"What do you want?" One of the guards – no, not guards, surely, but laborers – stared up at him from his place in the shade of the gate wall. 

"I've come to see M. Lamarque." Marius sat straight in his saddle, though his back ached frightfully. 

The men cast a look at one another. "The General's dead. Five days ago, now –" 

"I’m aware General Lamarque has died," Marius cut in, removing his hat for a moment. "You misunderstand. I've come to see his son." 

"And who are you?" 

"I am the attorney." Receiving only a blank, unmoved expression – not much different than the expression such a statement provoked in any circumstances, it was true – Marius pressed on: "I have the responsibility of settling the General's estate." 

One of the men let out a rough, low sound – surprise, or laughter? Perhaps both. They muttered amongst themselves, for long enough that Marius had time to wonder what these two were doing, precisely, controlling the flow of guests into the home of the best-respected winemaker in the Valley, deceased though he may have been. 

At last, one of them opened the gate enough to let his partner through – and, after he'd trotted into the dark, gaping arch of the house's entrance, the gate swung wide enough for Marius and his mount to follow. "Right, then," the remaining guard said with a sharp nod, his attention already beginning to wander out into the land around them. "On you go." 

It was a desperately curious state of affairs, Marius thought, as he rode along the approach to General Lamarque's very grand chateau. Certainly in the wake of a man's death – particularly a prominent man, and a man so well-admired as General Lamarque – a measure of chaos was to be expected. Lamarque's reputation had always been that of a fair man and a hard-working one, a man whose grand success both in battle and in business rested on a foundation of honor and of trust and kindness toward the men below him. The soldiers Marius had met spoke of him as a man who never puffed himself up, who was worthy of being followed on his own merits alone, never mind his rank. Lamarque's vineyards were described throughout the valley in the warm, affectionate tones more usually reserved for heaven. They were sublimely beautiful, they were sun-blessed, they were God's own favorite place, and everyone who participated in their operation, from the scullery to the General himself, was as happy as a mortal could be. The General's good spirit had breathed into it all and created a little crescent of paradise. 

Marius couldn't help but think the reasoning was flawed: it took but a glance to know the house had been built centuries before Lamarque had taken his first breath. The rock on which it sat had been there longer, the genius of no man at all. The vines had been planted long, long ago. General Lamarque's grand success had been built, as far as Marius could tell, on his father's grand success, and on his father's, and on his fathers. 

But this, he had been given to understand, was why no one liked a lawyer. 

He rode through the works being performed on the grounds around the house, his horse forced to pick through more than one set of obstacles created by tools, boards, and piles of earth that gave the place the character of a badly-kept graveyard. Any vineyard, of course, could expect high activity this time of year, but gardens and gates were hardly the places he'd have expected to see the labor concentrated. Perhaps such things were necessary before a harvest – he was contemplating how little, really, he knew about the intricacies of running a vineyard when he was met by a stable hand, dismounted, and shown to a kitchen entrance, where he wound his way through the stifling rooms and corridors until, finally, he found a man waiting for him in a bare and dusky hall. 

"Sir," Marius said, extending his hand. "I'm Pontmercy – the lawyer. I hope I haven't –" 

"M. Pontmercy," the man said, shaking his hand; he was an unassuming sort, neat and plain, with a thoughtful sort of cast to his face. "I'm very sorry – we should have expected you. So many things have fallen by the wayside these last few days. No doubt you're accustomed to it, in your line of work." 

"Oh, entirely. Entirely." 

"I hope I can be of assistance to you," he said, sweeping his arm toward the other end of the hall and beginning to lead them in that direction. "My name is Combeferre. I had the privilege of keeping the General's books – of managing his enterprise. I hope you'll understand, I'm loath to trouble the General's son in this unhappy time. I'm sure I can provide you with everything you need." 

Marius gave him a regretful bow. "I'm sure you can. Everything _I_ need is no doubt in your papers. But the law demands a little more, I'm afraid. I am very sorry – I am very sorry, but I really must have his signature." 

Combeferre gazed at him for a beat, and Marius imagined he could see his thoughts steering away behind his eyes – and then he nodded. "Of course. I understand." The hall around them was silent, empty, echoing; the absence of embellishment and trimming was striking, after the frenetic activity just beyond the walls. "We shall see him now." 

"Oh – a great part of the business can be accomplished without him," Marius said, chagrined. "I needn't see him until the very end. Tomorrow perhaps – after the funeral. I understand it's to be –" 

"He'll wish to have it over with," Combeferre said, with what might have been a dry edge in his voice. "Believe me." 

"Of course." Remorse churned in Marius' breast as they ascended a broad, shallow flight of stone stairs. He was new to this business, at least compared to many of its current practitioners, who tended to more closely resemble the decedents in these sorts of proceedings than the survivors. He was more accustomed to less delicate matters. His cases so very, very rarely involved death – or pain of any sort, really – and it ought to have let him float along in comfort, he supposed, sustaining himself on the trivial complaints which rich men made against one another, feeding off their margins, filling (or at least half-filling) his pockets without ever touching anything that mattered. Who was injured, after all, when a man who could misplace a hundred francs and never bat an eye found himself obliged to pay half that to another man whose accounts would feel fifty francs like the river felt a drop of rain? It was an existence without success or failure. He touched no one, and left no sign in the earth behind him. He walked on stone, as he did now, and his actions died as quickly as the thin echoes of his footfalls that dropped from the chateau's ceilings and fell away into the strangely empty darkness. 

Intruding upon a man's grief for his father in order to accomplish important business was no heinous act, perhaps. But it pricked him in a way his work usually did not. "The law's an old, rustic thing," he said quietly, apologetically, as they turned down another hall, similarly empty, stripped of anything which might once have hung there or stood in the stone recesses of the walls, adorned now only with a few panels of black fabric. "It was made in ruder times. Colder ones. Someday we shall manage to haul it into the future with the rest of us, I hope." 

"Yes," Combeferre replied, smiling at him rather kindly. "Yes, perhaps it shall. Please – wait here. I'll only be a moment." 

He disappeared behind a door, leaving Marius to stand, hat under his arm, in the hall. 

A minute passed. He heard voices, low – and something that might have been a laugh, had it not been so heavily weighted with something hard and grating, like rough rock and ice. It was a threatening sound that struck him behind his ribs. It made him so uneasy he felt half a fool – it was only a laugh – and the door opened. He steeled himself; but it was only Combeferre, beckoning him in. Marius marched over the threshold, head down. 

Inside, at the head of a table, sat a man – a man Marius hardly noticed at first, so strongly was his attention drawn to the portrait hanging above him. Here was the only decoration he had seen indoors thus far, as far as he could remember: a great high painting of the General, his hand raised as though about to send his troops over a hill. His posture and surroundings were sublime, but his face was almost shockingly unmilitary: a weak chin that disappeared into his collar, a wide young face, eyes that seemed more apt to drift around a room than flame with war. 

The man who sat beneath it, by contrast, would have been a perfect cliché astride a bronze horse: a powerfully square jaw, a mouth at once well-shaped and hard, dark, curling hair. Eyes in whose quiet, near-black depths swam something like the holy chaos out of which had sprung the world. 

General Lamarque's son, Marius reflected, looked _nothing_ like him. But then, some men did favor their mothers. 

Someone coughed. Only then did Marius notice another fellow, sitting in the window smoking a foul-smelling cigar, his feet propped upon a chair beside a dark, open bottle of wine. Above a limp, loose-hanging collar and a cravat so over-handled it more resembled a rope, his face was set in a smirking mask that made his cough seem like a laugh. There was something too penetrating in his eyes, something derisive, almost wicked. Marius found he could not look away, though he ardently wished to. 

Lamarque's son appeared to take no notice of him. "M. Pontmercy." He was deep in papers already, though their faces were turned down. His face was perfectly impassive. "You have business for me." 

Marius bowed his head. "I’m deeply sorry to trouble you now – my condolences, sir. I never met your father, but I understood from everyone who –" 

"He was a great man," the son cut in, his face stiff with discomfort. Grief made men rigid, sometimes. "The Valley is poorer without him. The nation." 

"Never was there a more loving father." The cigar-smoker rested his hand on his heart. "Louis was just telling me – weren't you, Louis – about all the happy hours spent in the –" 

Combeferre had a coughing fit; Louis Lamarque's face went a bit red across the nose, his eyes slanting toward his smoking friend with an intensity that might have set fields aflame. "Show me what I need to sign," he said, turning his gaze back to Marius. "Please. There's no need to explain," he continued, quickly, as Marius began to set his satchel on the table. "Only show me where to – where to put my name. Combeferre will see to the rest of it. I trust him implicitly." 

Marius obliged him, eager to be out of his way, and to extricate himself from whatever odd disagreement was clearly already brewing between these two men. He watched as Lamarque _fils_ signed his name in neat, meticulous script where indicated, and he only let his eyes wander once or twice to the man at the window, discovering each time, to his embarrassment, that he was being keenly watched in turn. 

When they had finished with their nearly-silent executions, Lamarque paused, and glanced toward Combeferre. "How long, do you think, will the rest of this matter take, between you?" 

"M. Pontmercy must certainly stay the night," Combeferre replied, taking the papers, perusing them, and neglecting to hand them back to Marius. "He's ridden so far – he couldn't possibly return today. Surely the bankers are in no rush." 

Lamarque nodded once, brusque. "You're welcome here. You'll forgive me for not providing hospitality to the General's standards." 

"Thank you – very much. Please think nothing of it. I shall endeavor to keep out of your way entirely." 

"Oh, but you'll want to come to the funeral," the smoking man said, grinning around his cigar with such an ominously skeletal show of teeth that it made Marius shudder. "It'll be one for the books."

\- - - 

Marius woke with a gasp.

His room was dark but for the light of the half moon, and quiet aside from his own rapid breathing. What had woken him, he could not have said. He had been perfectly exhausted when he’d retired, and had slept soundly, falling immediately into sleep as soon as he lay himself down in the generous bed; he could not remember dreaming. He thought, for just a moment, that he smelled smoke - but it was only the cuff of his shirt, to which the scent of that man’s cigar had clung all day after their very brief encounter. Marius shoved his arm beneath the blankets. The smell was oppressive, and recalled the rictus of his grin, and - 

And his laugh. Marius sat up, his fingers curled into the sheets, his body frozen. His _laugh_ \- that laugh which he had heard only once, and through a door, that was the sound that had woken him, he would have sworn it up and down. He listened, willing his heart to stop its deafening beat. No, it hadn’t been a dream, he had _heard_ it, and - there. Again. Distant, muffled, but unmistakable. 

He didn’t know why it unnerved him so. Perhaps it was this house, as bare as a tomb and just as dark, empty and draped in black - any laughter here sounded profoundly unnatural, even monstrous. Perhaps it was that man’s smile, and his sly demeanor, and the fact that no one had thought to tell Marius his name. Perhaps it was the contrast it made with Louis Lamarque’s upright manner - a contrast that Marius could not help but think suggested a danger to the General’s heir. Perhaps it was nothing: perhaps it was his own mind steeped in death, making danger out of every creak and sigh of wind. 

Whatever it was, he found he was incapable of lying in bed with it. He stood, picking his way carefully, silently across the room – emptied of everything but the essential furniture, as every other room here seemed to be. He stopped just beside the window, peering out, expecting to see nothing but an empty yard - and his breast rang with the shock of seeing several men, faceless in the night, at work on the grounds below. Lanterns illuminated little patches of land at their feet, and that was all: the rest was done in perfect darkness, and with hardly any sound. It made him shiver. 

What sort of place was this? What trouble had he found for himself? 

It was tempting to crawl back into bed and wait until the very first light of dawn to sneak down and take his horse and flee this place. Instead - something propelled him out into the dark hall, feeling his way along the length of it with one hand sliding against the stone. After no more than twenty paces, he heard them: voices. 

And that laugh. 

He walked on. A wavering pool of light slid out from beneath one of the doors, behind which the voices solidified into something almost, _almost_ distinct. Against his better judgement and the chill working its way up his back in a visceral warning, he pressed his ear to the door. 

“To you,” said Louis Lamarque, sounding less angry than tired, “everything is a joke.” 

“I make everything a joke. It’s different. Everything as it exists, as it stands before I do it the honor of twisting it up and shaping it into something with a point, everything as it _is_ \- is a tedious lump. _To you everything is a joke,_ you say. Did the wedding guests shake their heads at Jesus and say, _Jesus, to you everything is wine?_ What an ingrate.” 

“This - tomorrow - is serious.” 

“I know it’s serious to _you_ -” 

“It’s the most serious thing to have befallen this valley in decades. It is likely the most serious thing that will happen to any man living here in his entire life. If you must snigger about it, you could have the grace - the good _sense_ \- to do so once it’s accomplished. Once you can no longer hamstring it. Not do your very best to give the game away to men who might sound the alarm and give us up before the thing is done.” 

“Oh, pah. The lawyer? Some alarm he’d raise. _I beg your pardon, gentlemen, excuse me for troubling you, I hope this is not an inconvenient time, but I heard, while I was executing a will, a troubling thing, which I shall explain to you in due course, if -_ ” 

“You were grinning the entire time. It’s a wonder he didn’t suspect anything.” 

“If you’d truly wanted him to walk away none the wiser, you’d have let me be Louis Lamarque. You were awful. You’ll never make an actor.” 

The man who was not Louis Lamarque sniffed, and Marius’ skin crawled. “You,” he said, “would have made it into a joke. Which it is not.” 

The smoking man laughed, and a cold hand fell on Marius’ shoulder, and for a moment his vision narrowed to something dangerously small and dark as a rush of fear threatened to seize hold of him and pull him right down to the floor.

II. 

Having surveyed the earthworks as well as he could do for the night, Combeferre came inside to find a few hours’ rest before what would be a long, difficult, and momentous day. It would have been ideal, of course, to have these preparations completed more than twelve hours before the funeral, but death and decay were clocks over which man had no control. They had been given the time they had been given. The planning, naturally, had begun at the first sign of the General’s illness; but some things could only be accomplished in the eleventh hour. When watchful eyes were turned elsewhere. When the first men of the Valley were too concerned with which of them would take up the General’s mantle to pay much attention to the mundane goings-on at a dead man’s house.

It would be their loss, and their laborers’ gain. It was almost finished, although in his estimation loose threads hung off the whole affair with distressing regularity. Combeferre had only one task remaining to him tonight, at least - to report his progress to Enjolras - and though he would have happily collapsed for a while in the kitchen, he made the climb to their drawing room instead. 

When he saw a pale figure draped in white at the door, he found it curious how quickly his mind suggested to him: _spirit._ Well, why not? They all had life and death on the brain, these days - and, more than that, resurrection and justice. What was a ghost, but man’s fear of justice given shape? In any case - it was not a ghost. It was Marius Pontmercy clad in nothing but his shirt and brazenly eavesdropping. 

Combeferre approached him silently; there was no reason to allow Enjolras to discover he had been listening. It would do nothing but add to an already tense situation. He rested his hand on Pontmercy’s shoulder, and said a silent prayer of thanks when the man jumped, and went even paler, but refrained from shouting. Combeferre rested his finger against his lips, and gestured wordlessly down the hall back toward the room in which Pontmercy had been installed. Happily, Pontmercy complied, allowing himself to be hurried back to his own doorway without vocal protest. He only raised his arm when Combeferre followed him into the bedroom, and shut the door behind him. 

Even then, he seemed hardly to know what to do. He stood there, his chest heaving, his hand outstretched as though prepared to ward off an attack. He looked, Combeferre thought, frightfully young, but undress did that to a man. Likely he was of an age with him. 

“Where,” he whispered, harsh and accusatory, “is Louis Lamarque?” 

Combeferre pressed his lips into a line. “Jamaica. I believe.” 

_”Jamaica?”_

“Or nearly there by now. Do sit, M. Pontmercy. You’ve nothing to fear. Believe me - you’re all the richer for never having met him.” 

Pontmercy did not sit. “But the will -” 

“Contains little of his father’s wishes, I assure you. The General’s legacy is not the sort of thing that can be contained in a legal instrument, monsieur.” He hesitated to press too far, but Pontmercy knew enough to make him dangerous, now; it would not do to keep him just far enough in the dark that he would make himself a difficulty. “Do you understand? He was a man of great principle. Of great love for all people. For _the_ people. In life, he did all he could to ensure that the least of men around him were advanced.” 

Pontmercy swallowed. “And in death?” 

“In death, he wished to do more than the law allowed. You said yourself: it’s an old, rustic thing. The law does not allow it - nor would have his son, who I’m afraid was a greedy lout.” A greedy lout who had, eventually, been convinced to get on a boat by men who, whatever they might have been, would not be murderers. “He's known by all in this valley to prefer the charms of the city to work, and he will not be missed for some time. If it’s your professional reputation you’re worried for -” 

“It is not.” The vehemence in his voice was unexpected, but encouraging. They had stumbled upon a man of principle, it seemed; a man of thought. A man with decent ideas. Good. 

“Then I would ask only that you wait. Stay with us - two days. By tomorrow night, you’ll see. All will be settled. We carry out the General’s wishes. Trust in that.” 

“I hardly have any choice. The man is dead, and you claim his will never held his true intentions. Why should I believe you’re anything but thieves? Who _are_ those men, your compatriots?” 

“Yes,” Combeferre admitted, somewhat abashed, “I’m sorry for the pantomime. You caught us rather unawares. Enjolras is - the General’s protege, you could say. He would not have lied to you, if he could help it.” 

“And the other one?” 

Combeferre smiled. It was a fond expression. “He’ll lie to you all day.” 

It was not a satisfactory summing up of the situation, not hardly, and he could see Pontmercy was far from satisfied with it. But he could also see, he imagined, that some part of it appealed to their unexpected visitor. That Pontmercy was the sort of man who could appreciate being part of something larger than himself. Who understood that the future required a degree of faith. He seemed an intelligent man, and an honorable one - too honorable, at least, to attempt to sneak out under cover of night. 

One disaster averted, Combeferre left to inform his chief of all the others that might soon befall them. Dawn lurked hours below the horizon like a slow but inexorable threat. 

As he approached the drawing room once again, Enjolras slipped away around the corner, no more than a line of a shoulder and a purposeful set of footfalls. The door had been left open in his wake, and Combeferre was profoundly unsurprised to find Grantaire still present, slouched over the table, a bottle of wine guarded greedily in the crook of his arm.

"Will he return?" Combeferre asked, peering down the hallway after Enjolras' vanished form. 

Grantaire shrugged. "Does the sun rise?"

"We have more to discuss. Tomorrow comes quickly. There's much to prepare." Even as he said it, it struck him that it wasn't entirely true; they had been planning and designing and executing for weeks, and now the moment had almost come – and while there were many things that might go wrong, few enough of those could be prevented at this stage by preventative action. They were ready.

Whether the Valley would be ready, only the Valley could tell them. They would all find out, and very soon.

"When will you learn?" Grantaire said with a chastising laugh, taking a pull off his bottle and slamming it back down to the table. "When Enjolras is ready, the world is ready, too. Why resist? Why ask your troublesome questions? Why pretend you, a mote of dust, can speak to the wind? Cease and desist. I have. You'll be much happier." He drank again, and found that he was out of wine, and began the ponderous process of hauling himself to his feet. "Just be lifted up, and enjoy the view, and don't trouble your little self with when and where you'll crash again to earth. At least you had a ride."

III. 

The procession was somber and hurried like a line of ants, blown from the town to Lamarque’s great stone castle by an unseasonable gusting cold. Grantaire watched from the parapet of a tower, the wind biting at his back and sending his hair every which way and threatening to send him, his glass, and his bottle of the General’s reserve right off into the hills. They waddled, the men and women done up in so much thick formal black, and they were waddling as fast as they could to come eat and drink on Lamarque’s tab one last time, and it would have been funny even if it hadn’t made them look like geese. (Ants, he reminded himself. No matter. Same difference. Thoughtless pests, one and the same.)

Eventually it came within earshot of the house, and he had to think that at least a few of them would notice the shrubs and tarps thrown over places on the grounds, covering ostensible garden repairs, and ask what in blazes was going on with the General’s household - but wouldn’t you know it, none of them did, and he scoffed in grudging admiration as the plan for which he’d been prophesying a quick southward descent from day one continued to waddle north. 

It was just possible Combeferre knew what he was doing. 

Enjolras he didn’t doubt - but he was less the brains than the soul of the thing, and souls did not plan. Why should they? They’d be around forever. He was somewhere in that train of black, eyes forward when they should have been cast down, gait serious and energetic and yet somehow less than lively. He would be here soon, with the rest of them. And he was unlikely to be amused by Grantaire’s one last unasked for flourish of genius, but that was all right. Grantaire was amused by it, and Enjolras at this late stage would tolerate it, and that was quite enough. 

He stepped inside, climbing through a window. He straightened his servant’s getup, which he’d borrowed from a man of about his same shape and of exactly his same mind when it came to taking your good luck where you could find it. When someone came and asked to do your job for you for the day, you said yes, unless you had - how did the saying go? - something to hide, or someone to kill. 

Grantaire was downstairs and in position by the time the first wave of respectables was coming through the door. Stuffed-shirts all of them, winemakers and landlowners and vintners and the lot who had spent decades wishing fervently that they could be Lamarque, without understanding the first thing about him (or, in Grantaire’s opinion, with only a few exceptions, about wine). They looked about themselves, at the bare walls and the grimly minimal remains of the General’s furnishings, and the only reason they failed to recoil, he was sure, was that they were not-so-secretly delighted. _Oh, look. He was a poor bastard after all. Isn’t that a relief?_

And here came Enjolras, the high, unforgiving sweep of his collar nearly biting into his jaw, tipping his chin up at the angle Grantaire loved best. He was a few paces behind the lawyer, who, bless him, looked like he was about to run into battle and that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Funny how the same brand of idealists stumbled into one another. Well, good for him. Bad form, though: you don’t want to look rapturous at a funeral. 

The weight of Enjolras’ eye when it fell on him was tangible. Grantaire did his utmost not to grin. Enjolras excused himself from the man he’d been engaged with, and made his way over to the slightly rumpled-looking servant tending to the cheese. 

“What are you doing?” he asked, low, setting his arm around Grantaire’s shoulders and turning him away from the crowd, which began to filter in slowly around them. 

“Watching the show.” 

“This is not a show -” 

“Helping, then. You can use every pair of hands you can get.” 

“I told you,” Enjolras continued, and Grantaire hoped he knew that his window for realistically advising the help was fast coming to a close, “to stay out of the way. There will be time later for your sort of -” 

A guest jostled into them, and they were broken apart; and, having not received a direct order to clear the deck, Grantaire went back to his station, watching, waiting, and doing very little serving. 

The gathering filled out, its numbers sending a hellish clatter of voices up to the ceilings and crashing back down again, quite unmitigated in the absence of curtains, carpets, sofas, tapestries. Happily, the weather kept everyone from deciding to poke their noses outside. They all mulled around with their wine and their bit of food, offering condolences, slyly slipping into business talk, dreaming, no doubt, of chopping up fields. Of appropriating the General’s label. Of continuing his fine operation in his absence. If a workman sometimes darted by the window with a rake or a coil of rope or something that looked suspiciously like a musket, no one noticed. 

The hour before the sun went down was the worst. He could see it in Enjolras’ face: an impatient strain that threatened to snap him open and let out the triumphant anger he was obliged to keep in for just a little longer. 

Well. If Grantaire was good for anything, it was drawing out his pique. _See_ , he thought. _I am of use to you. My time has come already._

_Pardon me, monsieur,_ was all it took, and Enjolras followed him off toward the kitchens, a master seeing to some household emergency. Grantaire had known he would come. Any potential trouble with his conspiracy was worth investigating. He was less certain that Enjolras would follow him into the cellar, and allow him to shut the doors behind the both of them; but he was allowed that, too. It was only when Grantaire slid his arms around his waist, relishing the way his coat hewed close to his waist, that he heard Enjolras’ impatience burst forth in a rush of exasperated breath. 

“What are you doing?” 

“You know, don’t you, that you can’t play the virgin with me? I may frequently be drunk, but my memory’s not a total loss.” 

“ _Now_ is not the time. Now is the very furthest from -” 

“You ought to relax, or you’ll blow your own foot off.” 

“This,” Enjolras said, whirling away from him and catching his shoulder on an impressive cobweb, “is not well-calculated to meet that particular end. I’ll relax when this is finished. Tomorrow.” 

“You had better get to it before tomorrow.” Grantaire advanced on him, one step; but he left a foot or so of agitated dust swirling in the air between them. Sometimes he caught sight of Enjolras and wondered how, precisely, he had ever summoned the courage to lay his hands on such a figure. It was like stealing a kiss from sea squall. “These men are mostly idiots, but they won’t miss the look in Lamarque’s protege’s eye. You’re not grieving. You’re itching for them to turn around so you can stab them in the back.” 

“I am grieving,” Enjolras said, and he said it so simply, and his eyes softened so markedly, that Grantaire was on his knees at once, the bite of irony gone from his voice, his hand soft at the back of Enjolras’ knee. 

“I know,” he said. “I didn’t mean it that way.” 

Grantaire had misjudged, it appeared. Enjolras needed to be distracted - but not from the coming action. He ought to have known, really. Enjolras had the future well in hand. Possibility, sunrise, the flowing tide: these were all his elements. It was death and dusk and endings, the ebb of things he was quite incapable of bearing on his own. The loss of a good man, of a friend - a friend whose funeral he had steered into a conspiracy, no less - would leave him foundering. 

Of the two of them, Grantaire knew his way better around gentleness. When he opened Enjolras’ trousers and took him into his mouth, the hands in his hair were taut and stinging; when he raised his eyes to see Enjolras’ face, it was turned up to the ceiling - the floor on which their guests roamed above - and the angle of his mouth even when it hung a little loose seemed sharp and perfectly drawn, the mouth of a harbinger more than a lover. 

When he went back upstairs with the taste of his seed still lingering in his mouth, he comforted himself he’d alleviated one problem, if perhaps not the one he’d set out to do. Well - and what had he expected? Plots and revolutions were hardly in his wheelhouse. 

Luckily, they rolled on without him, guided by better-suited men. The evening faded, and night slowly darkened the windows, and finally, _finally_ , what felt like ages into this gloomy and wine-soaked and interminable affair, he heard the first startled protests from the crowd. 

They had finally realized, it seemed, that all of the doors were locked. 

One of them approached him - hazards of looking like a servant: some people expected you to serve - and set their hand on his shoulder and asked, _my good man_ , whether he could open the way. 

“You can try to jump out the window,” he said, finally uncorking a bottle for himself, and taking a seat on the sideboard, drinking in the shock and distaste on the man’s face, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.” 

The confusion transformed over the space of two minutes - remarkably quickly, to Grantaire’s mind - into something approaching panic. Men who weren’t accustomed to having their desires thwarted resorted rapidly to fear, it seemed. Never having been one, he could hardly have known. It was clear that Enjolras knew their patterns well, however - the very moment the first shout went up, threatening to break into chaos, Enjolras was standing on a table. 

“Masters of the Valley,” his voice rang out, and he was speaking, suddenly, into relative silence - he opened his lips, and all were listening. The walls rang his voice back to him. “You’ve been gathered here to mourn he who was the best of you. General Lamarque is dead. I will speak to you now of his will. You have all come into an inheritance from him. You will not celebrate it, perhaps, but you should. It has liberated you from evil. First: you have been unburdened of your lands. They have been returned to those who hold them by right: the workers who turn them to productive use. Second -” 

Anger erupted into words. Cries of _nonsense_ and _he hasn’t the right_ mixed with threats and oaths, and one voice rose above the rest, and Grantaire could have sworn it was Combeferre’s: “Where’s the will? Where is this written?” 

“In the stars,” Enjolras replied. “In God’s own hand. In the history of man.” 

Grantaire sighed. _This is not a show,_ indeed. 

“Second: you have been graciously afforded the opportunity to become a benefit to your fellow man. All men are granted the right to work. You are welcome to work the lands you have until now squeezed for nothing but money. You can know the joy of honest labor, as an equal of your fellow workers, or you can remove yourself to a place of your choosing. We will not stop you.” 

A man let out a violent curse, and made for one of the windows, no doubt meaning to open the casement and be gone. He was not, as far as Grantaire could tell, a plant, but he might as well have been: the pair of large, earth-stained, and very armed men who stepped in front of the window and invited him out to try them were just the punctuation Enjolras needed. 

“Third: Until you have agreed to these terms, you will remain here as our guests. Our riders have gone out to your estates. Your workers are even now being informed of this new state of affairs. Should any of them wish to have you back, you will be welcome to return.” 

It was clear from the rising horror in the room that few expected to receive this invitation. Enjolras stepped down, having said his piece, and the room began to thrash like the ocean in a storm. _I will not stay_ and _you cannot keep us_ and _this is robbery_ and _there are too many of us, you cannot stop us_ went up into the air like spray. 

Enjolras cut it down with one blow: “I do not wish to burn this house, but if I must, then I must.” 

He had no knack for calming people, but he certainly knew, Grantaire reflected, how to make a point. Combeferre, Pontmercy, and a pack of the workers whose entrenchments and fortifications had turned this place into a prison began escorting all the worthies into their accommodations. Lamarque’s rooms had been stripped of all their valuables, of all their implements, of anything that might have been shaped into a weapon or a means of escape - but still they were dignified, dry, warm, rich. Better than most of the workers in these people’s estates would have tonight - although perhaps not tomorrow. Grantaire took up his place on the parapet once again, keeping out of the way in the biting wind, the dark stretching around him broken only by the torches down below and the very, very faint lights from the nearest chateau, several hills away. He drank, and he felt sorry for the workers there, who had to listen to that same speech delivered in a far less appealing package. It would be convincing enough, however, he expected. Most men didn’t need beauty in order to see their own advantage. 

Only him. He smiled. He had been well provided for.

The mist lying across the valley made it all look silver and new, untarnished, colors gleaming through here and there in winks like stars appearing in the tattered edges of clouds. Damn crept up the hills, and he met it waking for the second time in two days: a pattern which could not be allowed to stand, but which now he tolerated because it put him in mind of the man below, no doubt still working steadily, unstoppably, toward the future: a dawn dressed in black.


End file.
